If the prime minister has to beg his people not to kill their daughters something is gravely wrong with the country and its citizens. But the question is , are the citizens the only one to blame or does the state also have a role in this mess. Before deciding, consider the other extreme “What if the indiscriminate elimination of girls was planned—not by individual parents thinking only of themselves but by some larger force ? And what if the Indian and U.S. governments and leading Western organisations had a role in it ?” This sensational suggestion was made by a senior obstetrician who has been quoted by Mara Hvistendahl in her 2012 Pulitzer finalist book ‘Unnatural Selection ‘. As always, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Before going further, a disclaimer, this article is not an attempt to point fingers or fix responsibility. It is just a fact based exploration of the reasons why we became a nation of daughter killers. The issues raised are largely known to the medical community and are taken from various books and publications . They are also freely available on the internet. I will quote sources and references as I go along . But at the outset, more out of habit, then anything else, I affirm that I know the repercussions of female feticide on society and do not support it in any manner.
Female infanticide is a dark part of our nations history but it was practised by certain castes in certain parts of the country, more of an aberration than the norm. Hence it was never an issue big enough to affect the sex ratio. Preference and preferential treatment to a male child is ingrained in the fabric of our society but that too was never a cause for alarm. People would mark their disapproval on a daughter’s birth, curse destiny and get on with life. Then where did we go wrong and how? The sad truth is, India’s skewed birth ratio is not a result of backward tradition but of economic growth and technological progress
In 1974 , funded by western organisations, amniocentesis was introduced in All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi to diagnose congenital malformations. In their book, ‘Writing the women’s movement ‘ Indu Agnihotri and Vina Mazumdar write that it was also used to determine the sex of the unborn fetus so that unwanted females could be aborted. It was endorsed as a way to control the ‘Population Explosion’ in a country where women would keep reproducing till the desired son was born, a birth control method which selectively controlled the birth of females. This policy seemed to suggest that it was okay to desire and obtain a male heir as long as the family size remained small
From this premium institute the technology slowly permeated to other medical colleges and government hospitals of the country . A few years later ultrasound started being used for the same purpose. This method was more acceptable because it was non invasive and there was no risk to the unborn child, at least the male child!! At the onset these methods were scarce and available to the upper strata of society but as technology became cheaper and private centres proliferated, it came within reach of the average Indian. That is when the sex ratio began to slide. So if not guilty of coercion, the state’s lack of farsightedness and understanding of the mindset of a patriarchal society can not be denied.
When feminist organisations started raising this issue the government realised its mistake. In 1978, sex selection was quickly banned in public hospitals but the harm had been done. To make matters worse the private sector had stepped in. If the government was driven by statistical targets, private clinics were driven by commerce. The walls of the country, specially Northern India, were crammed with advertisements of clinics diagnosing ‘healthy’ male or female babies in the womb. There was now a growing number of Indians who found it morally acceptable to kill daughters to limit the family size and there were doctors who had read papers ( Verma I.C etal in Journal of Indian Pediatrics, Sudha S et al in ‘Intensifying Masculinity in Sex Ratios in India ‘) on the virtues of female foeticide to reduce ‘unnecessary fecundity’. An avalanche had been triggered. Casualties were bound to occur.
Damage control was initiated. The government had a uphill task to fight this menace quickly and effectively. The Pre-Conception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act was passed in1994 and fully implemented two years later. The stringent measures taken by the government helped to stem the tide to a certain extent but changing the mindset of the nation is not easy. In her much acclaimed work, Mara Hvistendahl states that as late as the nineties many intellectuals were not against sex selection as a means of birth control. Then we can’t really blame the illiterate public for not understanding the downside of a policy which initially appealed to our learned elite. As we now, try to explain to people that girls and boys are equal and the desire for a male heir at all cost is wrong, it goes against the earlier message that it is natural to want a son and acceptable to get one by unnatural means.
And although we can absolve ourselves from all guilt claiming that it is a technology which came from the west, the fact is that we were a free nation and could have resisted the lure of the accompanying grants. Moreover, they didn’t indiscriminately kill their daughters but we killed ours. In western nations prenatal sex selection is used for sex balance, to ensure that families have children of both genders ,again, a debatable issue , but at least the sex ratio remains unaffected. On the other hand in India any number of sons are acceptable and cherished as a gift from God but a lone daughter is Bhateri ( enough! )and a second one is Maafi ( forgive us!!) . In such a son crazy nation sex selection was and will always be a lethal weapon
Before proceeding further I present some statistics for your perusal. Don’t worry the figures are so alarming, you can’t fall asleep! All over the world the sex ratio at birth hovers around 105, that is for every hundred girls born, 105 boys enter this world. This is natures way of compensating for men’s reckless behaviour which makes them outnumber women in early deaths. In south asian countries this number is an unnatural 107 and it gets worse with increasing birth order. In South Korea a study carried out in 1989 revealed that the ratio for the first born is 104 and it increases to an astounding 209 for the fourth child. A similar trend has been noted in India (Samiksha Manchanda etal 2011) A clear cut indication that female feticide is rampant. Over the years the world sex ratio has shown masculinisation too, but China and India, who make up one third of the human population, are the main contributors for this trend.
In India, at the turn of the last century, the sex ratio was a healthy 972, dropped to 946 in 1951, continued falling to the all time low of 927 in 1991, improved marginally to 933 in 2001 and further to 940 in 2011. The 2011 census also revealed that northern states remain worse hit with Haryana at the bottom with a dismal sex ratio of 877 while Kerala leads at 1084 which is much higher than the national average. The fall is more pronounced in the educated, urban class who opt for small family size with Delhi at a shameful 821 and Chandigarh at 773 .Another worrying trend is that since 1981 the sex ratio in the 0-6 age group has decreased faster than the ratio at birth which indicates that more girls die in early childhood due to acts of commission ( infanticide) or omission( malnutrition and disease). So as proposed by Nobel Laureate Amratya Sen, females face a ‘ mortality inequality’ along with the ‘natality inequality ‘. These figures of the Indian Government census do not auger well for the future of our country.
At this juncture we have good news and bad. The good news is it has been repeatedly postulated that with education and economic progress the sex ratio will even out. That its a temporary phase in a developing society. The bad news is that it will take time for this tide of social responsibility to percolate to the deepest crevices of society. Some estimates by demographers like Guilmoto have shown it to be as late as 2050 which is pretty far off. Already the pitfalls of a ‘masculinised ‘society with ‘surplus men’ have started showing and will only increase.
Twenty years have passed since the PNDT Act was implemented, millions of F-forms have been duly filled, centres have been regularised and certifications issued, inspections and raids conducted, licenses cancelled and doctors penalised. Through these aggressive actions the sex ratio has stabilised but continues to be the lowest in the world. There is a general consensus ( Hatti and Sekhar 2004, Jha et al. 2006, Visaria 2007) that these bans have not been very effective. In 2011, India’s then, home secretary, Mr. G.K. Pillai, said: “Whatever measures that have been put in place, over the last 40 years have not had any impact on child sex ratio and therefore require a complete review.”
This is partially because in the war between technology and legislation, the former will always win. Consider the latest developments in the field of medical engineering. With better machines and clearer images, ultrasound is no longer the prerogative of doctors. Anyone with a bit of training can do what doctors don’t. Advancing technology has also led to pocket sized portable ultrasound machines which are easy to hide from authorities. More potent abortifacients drugs have been introduced, which are easily available over the counter and will initiate the abortion process, if not complete it. And the newest is the possibility of sex selection without abortion. Sophisticated technologies used with in-vitro fertilisation can help select the sex of a baby before conception.
So although legislation remains the mainstay, it cannot be the only cure of this problem. Upliftment of society in general and girls in particular is imperative before any far reaching results can be achieved. Women empowerment through small measures like mid day meals and toilets and bigger projects like affordable healthcare, better education and job opportunities are needed. Anti – dowry campaigns by the front runners of society will work better than laws and help remove the ‘burden’ stigma from girls. Also safer environs at home and work through improved law and order conditions will help women reach their full potential and reduce bias against them.
In the end, no laws can help this situation until we change the way our society looks at daughters. I practice in a small town in Haryana. In the thirty years of my practice I have encountered numerous reasons for preferring a son but none of them can withstand logic and scientific reasoning. I am quoting some here. The commonest is that a son improves the stature of the woman in the family and society. The truth is since the mother has a set of X- chromosomes, it is the father’s X or Y chromosome which will decide the sex of the child. The mother can neither be blamed or acclaimed for it. It is an established fact that daughters are better caregivers which is more important than a son who may or may not help attain Nirvana. For emotional and practical reasons more married women continue to use their maiden name and just hyphenate their husbands name to it. So they are equally capable of carrying the family name forward. Lastly, scientifically speaking, daughters are more reliable carriers of the genetic pool and propagators of protoplasm. As is commonly said, motherhood is a certainty, paternity is just good faith!!
And although all the arguments listed above are sound, the only one which is worth making is this
Even if daughters are a burden on the family and are not capable of much, do they deserve to be killed ? In our country terrorists are granted a fair trial and given a chance to defend their actions. Our state reserves the death penalty for the rarest of rare cases . Being a girl cannot be a bigger crime.
(published as an OPED in the Tribune on 9/3/2015)